


Maladroit - The Network

by cutsycat



Series: Dictionary.Com Word of the Day Drabbles [1455]
Category: Castle (TV 2009), Leverage, NCIS
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:13:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21565894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cutsycat/pseuds/cutsycat
Summary: Tony gets kidnapped and his "network" decides to make themselves known to the MCRT who in their eyes has failed to protect Tony satisfactorily.
Relationships: Anthony DiNozzo/Eliot Spencer (Leverage)
Series: Dictionary.Com Word of the Day Drabbles [1455]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/444514
Comments: 14
Kudos: 162
Collections: Prompts for Cutsycat - NCIS (2018)





	Maladroit - The Network

**Author's Note:**

  * For [njflkf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/njflkf/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [njflkf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/njflkf/pseuds/njflkf) in the [cutsycat_NCIS_Prompts_2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/cutsycat_NCIS_Prompts_2018) collection. 



> Another dictionary.com word of the day drabble. This time from 04/25/2003 for the word [maladroit](http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/2003/04/25/maladroit).
> 
> maladroit[ mal-uh-droit ]  
> adjective  
> lacking in adroitness; unskillful; awkward; bungling; tactless:  
> to handle a diplomatic crisis in a very maladroit way.
> 
> This was requested by njflkf as part of my 2018 prompt challenge [here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/cutsycat_NCIS_Prompts_2018/profile). The 2018 Prompts are closed, however, you can still sign up for the 2019 Prompts [here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/cutsycat_NCIS_Prompts_2019/profile). More instructions are below if you wish to sign up. 
> 
> **Prompt:**
> 
> The Team meets the "DiNozzo Network" that Tony spoke of several times over the years.  
> Tony is kidnapped, and/or injured, SWAK, etc.  
> Network consists of men Tony went to school with. Which does NOT shock the Team as they know of the "Frat Brothers:.  
> What DOES shock them? Those "Frat brothers are all well placed cops, politicians, Military, Agents spanning several Agencies and countries, and Powerful Lawyers and Businessman.  
> You choose Tony's husband(that they did not know about) Please have him be very intimidating, in their face/take no crap, NOT fazed by Gibbs at all!!  
> The DiNozzo Network gets shit done!! AND takes NONE of the Teams crap!  
> Bonus points if in anger Gibbs Head slaps Tony and the Husband puts him on his ass.
> 
> NOT a suggestion, but.....AS I wrote this I kept thinking that the husband sounds like Steve McGarrett.  
>  **End Prompt**

“You know, I used to think Tony’s life would make a good story, but now I just wish he’d stop getting kidnapped and hurt.”

McGee whirled around, not recognizing the voice, and stopped in shock, stammering out, “You’re Rick Castle,” when he recognized the author extraordinaire. He’d been impressed not only by Castle’s literature, but by his research methods. He’d always wanted to be a field agent, but it wasn’t until he heard about Castle’s research method that he considered using real cases to help improve his writing. 

“That’s me. Now what are you doing to find Tony?”

“How do you even know he’s missing?”

Castle leveled McGee with a glare that while not near Gibbs’ level was pretty damn impressive. “I’m part of Tony’s network. Trust me, we always know where he is. If we left it up to you goofballs to rescue him all the time he’d already be dead.”

“Wait. Tony’s network?”

Castle looked at his hand before scrubbing some imaginary dirt off his nails as he affected a bored expression, “One of his frat brothers. I know he’s told you about us.”

“You were in the same fraternity as Tony.”

Castle shot McGee a look like he was insulting his intelligence. ”I try not to brag.”

“McGee, get this guy out of my bullpen,” Gibbs growled.

“But boss, this is Rick Castle, he’s a famous author.”

“I couldn’t care less about him. We need to focus on finding Tony.”

Castle shot Gibbs a look that suggested he might have promise, but as he looked at Ziva and McGee the disdain was evident in his eyes. “I can see you guys will be of no help again this time. Later!” 

McGee’s mouth dropped open as Castle just turned and left. Gibbs snapped his fingers and McGee snapped to attention. “Back to the case.”

“Right away, boss.”

“And you better find Tony before his network does,” the or else was left unsaid.

“Do you think Tony really knows this Rick Castle?” Ziva whispered to McGee. “Could this not be a prank?”

McGee frowned. “Rick Castle does love his pranks, but wouldn’t they wait to play a prank until Tony’s recovered?”

“You tell me.”

McGee furiously tapped away at his keyboard as he tried to figure out who else might be in Tony’s frat brother network. If he could figure that out, then maybe they could get to Tony before his network did. He couldn’t get far, though. 

He hadn’t expected Rick Castle to be this good with computers, but he was being stopped at every turn. Every time he thought he’d found a way in, he was blocked. His fingers typed away thunderously, but to no result.

“You know if you stopped trying to hack into our network you would make more progress on finding Tony,” a droll voice pointed out.

McGee whipped his head around expecting someone in a fancy suit to be standing behind him again, but there was no one. “Who are you? Where are you?”

“Now that would be telling, suffice to say, we’re watching you and you should go back to focusing on finding Tony.”

McGee growled as the voice faded away and with it most of his computer capabilities. McGee tried to continue his investigation into Tony’s network, but unless the search was related to the case Tony was working when he vanished, his computer simply refused to return any results. He’d never seen anything like it. 

Ziva wasn’t having any better luck finding information on where Tony could have been taken. They’d been at this for hours and were no closer to finding the truth. Gibbs had refused to let them leave for lunch, insisting they would stay here until they found Tony. 

In fact, when McGee finally found the location of Tony, he was pretty sure he’d been hand fed it by someone in Tony’s network and he didn’t like it one bit. He told Gibbs where Tony appeared to be and also suggested, “It might be a trap, sir.”

Gibbs ignored him, though, and they headed out for the location Tony was supposedly at. When they arrived there, Tim was shocked at the number of people present. It was obvious that Tony’s network had beat them there. 

The most surprising part? Tony’s network consisted of well placed cops, politicians, military, agents from multiple agencies and across multiple countries, powerful lawyers, and some of the most powerful businessmen. They were all patting Tony on the back and telling him that they were glad he was alive. Tony was smiling, despite looking like he’d just been through a gauntlet of weed whackers. 

Tony spotted them first and waved, which triggered the entire expanse of people to close ranks around Tony. Gibbs in his typical maladroit way ignored it and marched over to Tony. “DiNozzo! What the hell were you thinking?”

Tony scratched his head sheepishly, “Sorry, boss.”

Smack. Gibbs slapped the back of Tony’s head. “Be more aware of your surroundings next time.”

Pow. The big burly guy standing next to Tony socked Gibbs a good one. Ziva and McGee were too far away to do anything to help, not that they could have. The rest of the network was leveling glares at all three of them like they were to blame for Tony going missing.

Tony was ignoring it all as he grabbed Eliot’s hand. “Hey, hey. I’m alright.”

“No thanks to them,” Eliot muttered.

Tony rolled his eyes. “You know they tried their best.”

Eliot just glared at Gibbs. “Next time you think about putting hands on my husband, Don’t!” he snarled.

“Husband?” Ziva and Tim chorused in shock.

Tony shot them an embarrassed look, “Yeah.” He gestured for McGee and Ziva to come closer. The network parted just enough to allow the two to join Gibbs and Eliot down by Tony, but it was clear that they were doing this for Tony and didn’t care a whit what Ziva and Tim wanted as they were forced to walk single file and faced looks of disgust on every person they passed.

Once Tim and Ziva were close enough, Tony gestured to Eliot, “Meet my husband, Eliot Spencer.”

Gibbs was just getting up off the ground and he held his hand out to Eliot for a shake, “Good punch.”

Eliot shook Gibbs’ hand and nodded, but didn’t say anything. 

McGee looked around at the rest of the network. “I didn’t realize your network was so extensive.”

“Heh. I got lucky.”

Eliot rolled his eyes and jabbed Tony in the stomach with an elbow. “None of that. You’ve earned each and every one of them’s loyalty and you know it.”

Tony blushed, “I really didn’t do much.”

“Do you want me to have Hardison pull it up on the computer again, so that we can go over it in detail?”

“No, no, that’s fine.” Tony waved Eliot off.

“Hardison? Alec Hardison?”

“In the flesh,” Hardison agreed, seeming to appear out of nowhere.

“You were the one who locked down my computer, weren’t you?” McGee accused. 

Hardison shrugged, “It’s not like it was difficult. Parker could have done it.”

McGee’s eyes swirled with rage at the implied insult, but Tony just patted him on the shoulder, “Calm down, Probie. You still have a lot to learn. You’ll get there.”

“You going to be ok, Tony? I was kind of in the middle of an important business deal in Japan.”

“I’ll be fine. In fact, EVERYONE is welcome to return to work,” Tony shouted the word everyone to get their attention and the crowd started dispersing. 

Eliot and his team stayed as did the MCRT, but the rest returned to their very high powered jobs now that they’d assured themselves that Tony was still mostly in one piece. 

“I’ll be fine. I promise. I know you guys were in the middle of a job.” Tony gave Eliot a kiss. 

Eliot nodded, but he still glared at each and every one of the MCRT before he joined the rest of his team. 

“I can’t believe you know so many important people, Tony,” McGee sounded in awe.

“It’s not that big of a deal, McGee. I’m still the same Tony you’ve always known. Let’s just go back to work. We still have to arrest this sucker.” Tony pointed to where his captor had been left hogtied to the building courtesy of his frat brothers.

Gibbs tilted his head at Ziva and McGee and then at the suspect. Ziva and McGee sulked a bit, but they followed Gibbs’ order to pick up the suspect as the four of them returned to NCIS headquarters. 

“You’ve got a good group of people looking after you,” Gibbs murmured to Tony as they left.

“Yeah.”

“I’m glad.”

Tony bumped shoulders with Gibbs. He knew they were still in this together, even if Eliot had knocked Gibbs on his ass and hadn’t that been a sight to see. Though, maybe now, the team would be more careful about how they treated Tony. At least, he could hope. If not, he was sure Eliot and some of the others from his network would be more than happy to teach them a lesson, but that would be a last resort as far as Tony was concerned. He didn’t actually want anyone on the MCRT terminally injured, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> The dictionary.com series has no stories already written for it after this one, so I will be posting at least no more stories before I stop posting again. I'm hoping to get more stories written before then, so that I don't stop posting for a while. Wish me luck! 
> 
> It's 2019 now and I have closed my 2018 Prompt collection, but fear not my 2019 Prompt Collection is now open [here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/cutsycat_NCIS_Prompts_2019/profile). Just click the sign up link. ;) It will remain open until the beginning of 2020. I'm hoping to complete all the 2019 prompts by the end of 2020. Do not fear I have not forgotten about the 2018 prompts and will continue working through them. It's just easier for me to not get overwhelmed if I keep the prompts separated by the year they were given to me.
> 
> If you are not an ao3 member, you can prompt me [here](http://cutsycat.livejournal.com/50701.html). Please follow the same rules as are listed in the above link. However, because this is a handmade prompt form(that thinks it's a poll), it is considerably more limited than what ao3 provides, so please use the ao3 form if you're an ao3 member. Please note the name option is for a name that I can say this is for so that you know it's for you. Since this is for non ao3 members it won't be true gifts, but you will be mentioned in the notes. Please note if you have already voted in the poll and would like to request more stories you can just add a comment to the poll. Please include the name along with the prompt, so that I can appropriately gift the prompt to you.
> 
> For any authors that want to chat and/or are looking for a place where they can toss plot ideas around and get input from people, you can come join my discord server that is specifically geared towards writing/encouraging people to write and authors. The invite link is [here](https://discord.gg/HFvwpCq). If you're not an author, but want to chat with me about writing/stories or anything else you are welcome to join. I reserve the right to boot you from my server if all you do is pester me about updates, however. *grin* Really anyone who wants to talk about writing and/or plot ideas for various stories is welcome to join. 
> 
> Also, Drakonyashka has translated a couple of my works into Russian. [Tutelage](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12378780) and [Imbue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12378840). Go support them. 


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